Glass or polymers: 50 experts discussed new microfluidic platforms at Micronit in the Netherlands

More than 50 experts on microfluidics met at the new facilities of Micronit Microfludics b.v. in Enschede, the Netherlands, on Februar 21 for an IVAM Open Business Day. Events like this are always hosted by a member of IVAM Microtechnology Network and are open for other companies and institutes.

Ronny van`t Oever, CTO of Micronit Microfluidics, opened the meeting on microfluidics for life sciences. ”We promote glass as a substrate material for microfluidics in life sciences. Besides the excellent time to market and shelf life it is cost effective, has very positive surface properties and can be used for high-quality optical detection”, stated van`t Oever.

In contrast, participants as Dr. Holger Bartos from Boehringer Ingelheim microParts or Severin Dahms from Bartels Mikrotechnik favor polymers as materials. The lively discussion was triggered by a presentation of Prof. Dr. Roland Zengerle from the Institute of Microsystems Technology (IMTEK), University of Freiburg, who is also head of HSG-IMIT. Zengerle presented advanced monolithic platforms and gave visions of the acceleration of development times for various applications for biomedical assays.

“The markets for ready-to-use microfluidic applications go upwards”, says Dr. Uwe Kleinkes, Managing Director of IVAM, “We will intense the activities in this field at the next COMPAMED Spring Convention, presenting high-tech trends for medical technology.”

The presentations of the Open Business Day are available on request from Florence Bukow (fb@ivam.de). The next meeting in the Netherlands will focus on production technologies and takes place on March 19 at IMS BV, Integrated Mechanization Solutions, in Almelo. Beforehand, Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. will present laser technologies for micromachining on March 10 in Hanover, Germany. More information at http://www.ivam.de/index.php?content=messen_stammtische&clear=2.